OT: Van Halen earned extra 1$ million from scalped tickets

[policerule]

This fucked up world just keeps piling on the shit.

Where's the love?

(Sorry, too much granola in my bowl this morning)

[Divemistress of the Dark]

Honestly? I wouldn't really mind if bands did this upfront, it's just the sneaking around and doing it through the back channels that's irritating. Come on - we all know some people will pay crazy money for front row tickets to see popular bands. Frankly, one reason I doubt this was as much of a factor during the Police tour was that they had all those auctions - I seem to remember tix going for 5 grand or so for a few of the big-city shows, Chicago was one. Also all the "hot seat," "gold seat" packages or what have you, and the heavy subsidization on the part of Best Buy, which used the tour to boost its own loyalty program.

You know, if people want to pay big bucks - fine by me. It's a free country. Personally I only saw two Police shows right down front, within the first one or two rows, and one of those tickets was free - I got the other through the fanclub. So I've got no complaint. Sure, it'd be nice if popular bands put more of the down-front tickets into fan-club sales, but since when isn't promotion of some hugely popular performing artist anything but big business? (The artists are treated like royalty as well, which is also a bit galling for what's supposedly a democracy, but that's a whole 'nother story.)

As Susan points out, you had to expect this issue would come to a head sooner or later. Why should bands and management subsidize the scalping industry? The very idea is ridiculous.

Here's what I personally do to avoid much of the madness:

* Go to shows in smaller metro areas, like Columbus and Louisville - both of which are routinely on the roster for popular band tours. Tickets are invariably cheaper and easier to get than in NYC or Boston. Heck, by the time you pay $500 for a ticket, you could easily buy a Southwest plane ticket and a hotel room to get what could be a better vantage point on the band in a smaller city.

* Patronize bands that aren't crazy popular or that don't charge hundreds for tickets. It's insane to pretend that only mega-artists will put on a good show. Even among the hugely famous, there are exceptions to the fan-gouging rule - I saw 60-million-album-selling act Green Day three times last month and paid $50 per ticket, which is the top price they charge. The entire floor is always GA at those shows. Hell, even the Crooked Vultures tour coming up featuring a member of Led-bloody-Zeppelin is selling tix for the whopping price of $50, and with maybe one or two exceptions the venues are all GA-only.

I just wonder what's behind the hypocrisy. Do these bands think people don't know that this is a capitalist society and that many people have more money than sense? Are they trying to preserve the illusion of democracy amongst their fanbase, and pretend that everyone has an equal shot at tickets? With all due respect, I think most people realized that ideal had been shot through the heart by the likes of LiveNation a long time ago.

And as far as how I think scalpers get tickets, I'm assuming you haven't read very many SC.net threads on this subject - welcome back, by the way - but we've posted several threads here on exactly how they do it. They've got banks of computers designed to hack CAPTCHA and ranks of employees dedicated to nothing but working the system. Scalping is big business - why wouldn't the 'brokers', as they call themselves, apply themselves with due diligence?

Here's a great article from a few years ago on roboscalping, and one of the U2 tours.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/ ... lText=true

[Shangeris]

Many bands should do like Green Day: their tickets cost about 30€, eehm, about 40$, wich I think is an affordable price instead of 150$ for U2.

[Divemistress of the Dark]

Yep. I personally passed on U2 partly b/c of cost (but partly b/c I've seen them before.) However, I'm told the floor on those shows is GA - so props to the boys for that.

[Susan]

I'll just add a bit more about the pricing of U2 tickets. The current tour is GA on the floor and those tickets are cheap. BUT there are also plenty of $98 tickets on the first level off the floor--for example, in the "100 level" of Giants Stadium. Several of us got tickets in what we feel are excellent sections for this price. Then the ticket prices go to $250 for certain sections also on that level but for the life of me I can't imagine how much better I could've done in these better sections. Prices go down from there all the way down to $33 per ticket.
If they add arena dates for 2010 it will be interesting to see how they price it, because they won't have the economy of scale they achieved in the stadiums by opening up the seats that are usually closed off because they are behind the stage.

[Divemistress of the Dark]

Good to know. The only date I checked was Atlanta and all the tix left were $250 - but I know zilch about the U2 pricing strategy in general. If they're charging $50, $100, $30 - well, MWAH is all I have to say. Awesome.

You know, I'm not gonna sit here and tell people not to go see popular bands. Hell, I myself would pay silly money to get right down front for McCartney, and I may do that if he plays more dates next year. But I freely admit I'm sort of a weird bird - many times I don't like to be right down front - front row will ALWAYS be $$$ for any show that's not GA, and if I can't get front row I may as well be in the 50th. I'm so short I won't be able to see and some tall-ass frathole WILL plant himself in front of me two seconds before the show starts. 100 levels suit me fine, generally.

In short: Yeah, it sucks. But it's not like we didn't already know there was plenty of corruption and collusion on the part of the entertainment industry anyway...(suing people for hundreds of thousands for downloading songs worth $22 on ITunes? Really?)

Personally, I do my part by refusing to pay $400 for a concert ticket, except in a very [very] rare circumstance.

[HalcyonLisa]

Ticketmaster opened the sales here in the UK for the U2 360 tour on a friday at 9am (when most of us are at work).

I sat on my mobile phone and my son sat at the computer poised, ready.

I got through on the phone at 9.12am and my son had yet to get any kind of result on the website as it had stuck. At 9.12am all the "cheaper" GA tickets had gone and I had to get the £85 best possible seats, these of course come with a lovely £8.50 booking fee. Making it £187 for two of us to see U2. (My Ben Hur tickets also have a 10% booking fee. 10%!!!)

I did wait and get tickets for The Police tour off Ebay at less than face value but I hate buying concert tickets off auction sites.

If you like a universally popular group, then how do you beat this system and pay a fair price for a fair seat?

*edited for poor spelling*

[Shangeris]

The Italian tickets for U2 went on sale at 9 am too, so we went to the ticket store (wich I prefer to the online tickets sotres) and after the server crashed for 45 mins they had only the +100€ tickets. We took them, it was the only way to go to U2. = |

[Divemistress of the Dark]

Seems like a lot of people who had joined the U2 fan club did OK in the ticket lottery, right? ETA: Whoops, I wrote some of these posts on my IPhone and missed Susan's excellent summary above. Which gives the following more credence...

Honestly, I really can't complain on the fan club front. I've generally done pretty well in those sales - got 2nd row for AC/DC for a show coming up. Just got an in-demand Crooked Vultures ticket, got good Roger Daltrey seating, etc. It's probably worth a shot to pony up the cash, which in some cases is really only around $20, to join the fan club and get in on those presales. Of course I realize it may be too late for U2 shows, but suspect this won't be their last tour.

Although, come to think of it - Fan club may still be a good idea, since it seems like people always have extras to sell and you're more likely to get a fair price from another fan than from a scalper.

Of course, it helps to hang out on the forum of one of the band members, and if he's in a good mood you may wind up scoring a killer seat for free.

(Thank you, Stewart. I know it's not just when you're in a good mood that you do these things, also.)

[Susan]

The U2 fan club has had mixed results. On this tour I must say I did quite well and got in and out of the presale for Giants Stadium within about 5 minutes or so and that included throwing back a pair of seats I didn't want and risking it. Generally from what I saw on u2.com people did ok. I didn't see massive waves of complaints. We did get to purchase up to 4 tickets and that allotment (in the U.S.) could be split among more than one show so I still can get 2 tickets for a show in the future.

This was being watched closely because this went on right after the Springsteen ticket debacle where we were being shuttled over to Tickets Now so perhaps Tickebastard was on its best behavior that day. Also, fans got shafted big time on the last tour with the presales--some may remember Larry apologizing to fans on the Grammys as a result.

BUT it does have some sloppiness...although the members' gift is usually excellent, this year it took more than gentle prodding for many of us to get it (This year, it's a double CD of rare and remastered recordings of various b-sides and early versions of songs, not the best item ever but in other years we've gotten a t-shirt AND a CD of a Slane Castle performance from the previous tour; another time we got a DVD/CD from that tour). Renewing members pay $32 and this year we were divided up for presale priority based on length of time as a member. So there is a good attempt at some fairness with that.

[Horacio]

Sad.
Maybe depends on we from here to the future.
Slowly,humbly,inspirated and celebrating music with our souls.
Money is good,peaceful state of mind,too.
Just let´s decide!

Triste.
Tal vez dependa un poco de nosotros de aquí hacia el futuro.
Lentamente,humildemente,inspirados y celebrando la música con nuestras almas.
El dinero viene bien,pero la conciencia tranquila también.
Sólo debemos decidir ahora.

Best!

[giovanni]

It was easy to see something like that was going on...you never know how most of these tickets goes on ebay almost at the same moment (if not even before) the official sale starts...I always wondered how they could do it, thinking that the only way could be getting them from the promoter himself.
That's the way it goes.
One solution: just not buy one single ticket for a certain show, in order to show the disappointment, but that would be absolutely utopia, nothing can be done I would say.

[Kim]

I only read the first post and

1 - I'm not surprised. It probably happens on every tour.
2- The whole thing is one big fucking racket

I'm boycotting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!